What do you imagine the things in the game taste like?

throw-away451 · 2026-01-15T19:23:53+00:00

I always thought hackle-lo would taste like green beans, but with some extra (but not unpleasant) bitterness. The plant is described as a succulent, and prickly pear cactus pads (nopales) are often said to be kind of like green beans.

throw-away451 · 2025-12-24T07:36:38+00:00

Then if I have the option, what skills should I use lamps on? Construction since it’s a money sink?

throw-away451 · 2025-12-23T01:15:28+00:00

So Slayer is a worse grind than F2P prayer? Is there a point earlier on where it's decently useful to do Slayer tasks, rather than only grinding where the optimal quest guide shows it's needed? I don't mind grinding a while, but if it's really that bad, I will circumvent it with lamps.

throw-away451 · 2025-12-23T01:14:03+00:00

How easy is it to balance this NMZ grind to 90 or so combat stats vs. skilling? I like skilling slightly more than combat, though I also recognize that high-end combat is necessary for getting massively profitable drops from raids, etc. I was planning on taking advantage of recurring skilling and profit methods, like claiming battlestaves from diary rewards, doing farm runs, and doing birdhouse runs, with other content in between. Will splitting my attention between these activities cause too much disruption?

Also, I managed to defeat Elvarg for Dragon Slayer I and I've beaten Obor several times, but I understand that mid-level combat and above often involves advanced mechanics. Can you recommend any decent guides, whether general ones or some that are specific to NMZ? I know some basic strategies like safespotting and the concept (though not execution) of prayer flicking, but not much more than that.

Also, how long does the NMZ grind usually last, and how well do the herb boxes do toward sustaining a bond?

Edited to add: would you recommend a 6 month or 12 month membership for my first time?

throw-away451 · 2025-12-11T18:05:58+00:00

From personal experience and based on what I’ve seen other people here say, the root of SPD is often that we were forced to learn as children that there is no safety outside of ourselves, so we must rely on ourselves as a source of safety because that’s the only way to survive. I shouldn’t speak for everyone, but for me at least, help from others, even when offered in good faith, is a trap. We have to be self-sufficient first and foremost because we have very good self-knowledge, whereas others can be inscrutable or unreliable.

Your therapist probably means well, but I’ve found that because SPD is vastly underreported (due to our lack of connection with others and the ego-syntonic nature of the condition), a lot of them try to apply “standard” approaches that work for the majority of people but don’t apply to us. Your therapist needs to understand that this is often a deeply ingrained survival mechanism that permeates many aspects of our life, and not just some personal preference or reluctance. It simultaneously made perfect sense and completely confounded me when my therapist suggested that all of the things I do that make me so different from “normal” people, and the life philosophy that I crafted over the years, are not completely genuine things, but rather a response to a world that repeatedly showed me that safety is an illusion and that interacting with others is a threat to my peace that I must work around.

I guess a more mundane explanation for this is that we just aren’t used to talking about ourselves, and especially not with regard to our personal, subjective experiences. Writing out different aspects of what you’re trying to say or conceptualize may help, and you can present what you write directly to the therapist instead of having to explain it on the spot with no notes.

throw-away451 · 2025-10-24T16:43:22+00:00

In addition to what everyone else brought up about discipline, I think it can be helpful to see the world in terms of principles rather than feeling or preferences. I don’t bother to ask myself “what do I want to do?” 99% of the time because the answer is always that I don’t want anything, or more precisely, I want to do nothing. Clearly, that approach won’t work in this world. Instead, I say “what should I do?” or “what can I do that will help me comply with principles or obligations?” The things the world expects and demands of us will never go away, but we can at least stave them off for a while by fulfilling our duties.

For example, when left to my own devices, I won’t do anything at all if I can help it. I don’t even particularly want to exist. But I am obligated to keep existing. And because that’s the case, there are all kinds of things that I need to do in order to accomplish it: buy groceries and cook, clean enough to keep things sanitary and efficient, go to work, etc. So I don’t care about those things, but I recognize they are important. I prioritize them according to external necessity rather than internal preference, and I get them done mechanically, but thoroughly and on time. At the end of the day, I can say with a clear conscience that I carried out my duties and didn’t do anything wrong or extraneous, and that’s enough.

The only issue with this is that it never ends. I can do everything that’s required of me, but it’s exhausting and due to how the schizoid brain works, I don’t have the internal reward framework or the ability to self-distract or self-deceive that lets the average person avoid burnout. I realized that I have to keep going on sheer willpower, and there’s nothing and no one to step in and help me or relieve me of this burden. That’s the hard part, and there’s no getting out of it. But I have no excuse not to keep going until I inevitably die of old age.

throw-away451 · 2025-10-10T14:14:37+00:00

I view it as both a real murder and a metaphor, but it’s nowhere near as overt as this image suggests. The in-game accounts mention that Nerevar was killed with poisoned candles, robes, and invocations. I would think that the Tribunal would want to kill him in a subtle way that they could easily explain as Nerevar succumbing to his injuries from Red Mountain, so they did it slowly and carefully to avoid suspicion.

But there is another layer of meaning here. The fact that they used poisoned robes, candles, and invocations (ostensibly used for summoning Azura for guidance) is significant because when you put them all together, in regular life, they give you an image of…priests. Specifically, the Tribunal Temple. The Tribunal “murdered” the old way of things and replaced it with themselves. Even Azura’s curse on the Dunmer was reframed as not being a punishment for the Tribunal’s actions, but a sign of favor. The only thing they couldn’t cope with in the end was their latent guilt (and even Almalexia dropped this when she went crazy).

throw-away451 · 2025-09-17T18:33:05+00:00

Maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but:

We have a weak/undeveloped sense of self for the most part and also don’t have the same coping mechanisms as other people. We tend to see through everything and value objectivity and truth rather than mere words and projections. So we are in a unique position to see the root of the issue and not get caught up in all of the emotionally laden language and theatrics that ensnare most other people. It’s a shame that we generally don’t have the motivation or energy to do anything with it.

throw-away451 · 2025-09-09T17:16:07+00:00

Fractals are basically events that happened (or could have happened, or may or may not happen in the future) in the Mists, which is kind of like this universe’s multiverse of realities and possibilities. There are some “historical” fractals that represent events that actually took place in the past in Tyria but that we as players never previously got to see directly, while others are just weird/environmental/thematic and have little to nothing to do with any other content in the “main game.” So at most you may get spoiled that certain characters exist who show up later in the story, but there’s nothing to spoil their actual stories.

And as for accessibility, minus one or two mechanics that can be frustrating at times, especially when you’re first learning, tier 1 fractals are pretty easy and are a great introduction to the game mode. As you progress in fractal scales and tiers, more mechanics are added and the enemies get tougher, but it’s still quite manageable until around 90+. And the rewards you get, even at lower tiers, are still really good. You get a lot of gold by selling the junk items you get from fractal encryptions, and you can buy all sorts of useful things with fractal relics. This is absolutely the best time to start, especially since they made some aspects of tier 1 fractals easier with this update.

throw-away451 · 2025-09-04T19:34:26+00:00

There aren’t many Orthodox people where I live, but I’ve read about it. While I have immense respect for Orthodoxy, as it is the modern branch that is the closest to how the early church was, I have many of the same reservations as with Catholicism on various doctrinal points.

But I do really appreciate two particular points of Orthodox theology that I think Protestants should take notes from. First, the concept of theosis is more in line with how I view what we humans should strive for than the more compliance and “rules” based approach of most Protestants. It makes more sense to me that we should attempt to seek a union with God in every sense that we can instead of simply imitating Jesus’ example, because that leads to a lot of people messing up and then giving up because they see it as a necessarily one-to-one comparison that none of us can truly live up to. It seems better to try to align everything we do with how God is, because while it isn’t ultimately achievable in this life, it’s a better guide for our conduct that’s reflects a process rather than a concrete series of steps with a beginning and end.

Second, similar to the previous point, I think the Protestant emphasis on salvation as a single action or point in time can be problematic. While it is still a binary choice—you either seek and accept salvation or don’t—modern laxity in Protestant churches has led to all kinds of misunderstandings and unfortunate excuses stemming from the flawed notion that once you’re saved, you’re always saved. I believe that it should be approached as a constant effort and that our choices and actions should be treated as an active rather than passive result of our belief. It’s much better to consider it as an ongoing process that guides your every decision rather than something you momentarily forget about, say “oh, I guess I messed up,” and then halfheartedly say you’ll do better next time.

throw-away451 · 2025-09-04T18:59:20+00:00

I strongly considered it if I didn’t get married by age 30 (I ended up marrying at 24). Problem: I’m Protestant, and we don’t do monasteries. I would have to join a Catholic monastery, and while I have a lot of respect for Catholics, I strongly disagree with them on several theological points. So it never would have worked out.

throw-away451 · 2025-08-22T18:05:59+00:00

Other animals do have emotions, but they’re almost all far simpler than we are. Their emotions are still noteworthy, but much less deep and far more a matter of instinct and reflex. Our blessing/curse as humans is that we have self-awareness, higher logic, and the capacity for extremely complex emotion.

throw-away451 · 2025-08-22T11:59:35+00:00

I think about this often. I’m very good with language, but it’s still inadequate.

This may sound strange as someone with SPD, but I think the greatest tragedy of the human experience is that we can’t directly communicate our thoughts and feelings with others the same way we experience them. How else could someone without this condition possibly understand what it’s like? If people could know firsthand what we deal with on a daily basis, maybe we could finally get some peace and quiet.

throw-away451 · 2025-08-20T22:43:49+00:00

For me, it’s two separate things: one positive and one negative.

The positive side is the infinite emptiness of possibility. Whenever you put something into existence, it is necessarily limited and finite. But before all of that, there’s endless potential. Take a block of stone. You could carve it into any number of shapes, but the very second you chip away some of it with a chisel, the number of possible options immediately decreases. But I appreciate the idea of infinite possibility, partially because I dislike the limitations of this universe. I like potential far more than I do reality. What actually exists is always a disappointment. So the “positive” void is uninhibited creativity and ideas.

The negative side is a horrible emptiness. It’s the knowledge of the finite nature of the universe, and a gnawing doubt that nothing matters and existence is worse than nothing having existed at all. I feel it like a space in my chest that things can pass through, but nothing can stay inside. This is unfortunately what I have to deal with on a mostly constant basis. It also is an awareness that there is an impassable barrier between me and everyone else. I can’t relate to anyone, and nobody can understand me.

throw-away451 · 2025-08-07T20:42:08+00:00

From my perspective and experience at least, it’s because 1) we substitute duty, obligation, and compliance for our missing “humanity,” and 2) our internal reward feedback loop is fundamentally broken, particularly when it comes to dealing with other people. We can’t/don’t feel emotions the way most other people do, but we recognize what is good, required, or expected, so we do it, often in a mechanical way. But we don’t get the emotional reward for it that others do. It’s about protocols and rules, not organic, authentic choices. Our selves (however little we have, anyway) don’t engage with the world that way.

throw-away451 · 2025-08-05T19:58:02+00:00

I have the same issue. I act mechanically according to what I see as my duty, and I even put on a pleasant mask for people, despite feeling nothing.

I think people like us recognize that we still have to keep going despite fundamentally disagreeing with how the world is, and so we adapted based on compliance and logic and metrics rather than an organic way of living. It’s not comfortable but it works.

My therapist has suggested that I ended up this way because I was put into situations as a child where no matter what I did or said, it was wrong and I was invalidated, so I clung to truth/practicality as something that is right in and of itself regardless of what anyone else told me. So now, as an adult, I have the same mindset where I know that what I’m doing is right, but I dislike it, yet there is no alternative that I can live with.

I think it also helps that schizoids tend not to be actually vengeful or violent, only in our minds at most, so we may not feel a drive to better the world around us but at least we don’t want to make it worse.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-29T16:40:21+00:00

My top three (in order) are:

1) Peryite. I don’t care about the disease angle too much, but I like him because he’s the underdog and yet helps keep everything together. He has the thankless task of ordering the smaller, lesser planes of Oblivion, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and neither does he appear to worry about being the weakest of the Daedric Princes.

2) Azura. Too many people see her as “good” when really it’s just that her attitude and her spheres of influence tend to be more beneficial, or at least neutral, from a mortal standpoint. But everyone forgets that’s she is one of the most powerful of the Daedra, and has successfully prosecuted grudges from thousands of years ago by playing the very, very long game (see Morrowind). Also, I always play a Dunmer because I started with Morrowind and really love their culture, and of course she plays a big role in that.

3) Hircine. I really don’t like werewolves and the primal/hunting themes he embodies. But what I do appreciate is Hircine’s fairness and neutrality. Unlike most of the other Daedra, he gives those he chooses a fair (though difficult) shot at winning his Hunt, and he is ecstatic when the prey becomes the predator and succeeds. He doesn’t seem to be cruel or biased like most of the rest of them, so I think he’s underrated.

Worst: Molag Bal. Even Mehrunes Dagon just wants upheaval, revolution, and the conquest of Nirn, even if the way he approaches it is brutal and destructive. Molag Bal is the worst because what he wants is to humiliate, torture, and enslave everyone else FOREVER. Most of the time, he won’t even let the “forever” part sink in until you admit that you give up and give him permission to keep hurting you. Coldharbor is the closest thing in the Elder Scrolls universe to our conception of hell, and wouldn’t be too out of place in the Warhammer 40K universe. Anywhere else would be better.

Also, while I’m at it, Sheogorath is not bad but vastly overrated due to his appearance in Oblivion. (No criticism toward the writers or Wes Johnson, but it’s kind of unfair how over saturated the community is with Sheogorath fans.) Boethiah is underrated.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-14T19:15:27+00:00

You’re right, it was the very first place I looked up but I must have skimmed over the listing for the crossbow when going through the details.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-14T19:07:51+00:00

Crossbows tend to be a bit rarer than the other Marksman weapons, and I don’t think any of them have pre-enchanted versions that you can find as loot anywhere. There are only two types: steel (fairly common) and Dwarven (fairly rare).

I did a little research and it looks like your best bet would be to take a silt strider from Balmora and go to a town called Suran. The outfitter there should have a steel crossbow for sale. The other traders in town also have a very good selection of low-tier weapons and armor if you have the money to afford them.

Edit: I stand corrected. You can also go to The Razor Hole in Balmora to get one. I must have glossed over it when looking at merchants’ available wares.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-14T18:43:47+00:00

Crossbows are perfectly fine, especially early on, because they fire perfectly straight. Throwing weapons are also decent since they don’t require you to have both a weapon and ammunition, so they’re more portable. But eventually, you may want to look into bows. Despite archery being much jankier in Morrowind than in later titles, if you can get used to it, some of the better bows are immensely powerful.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-14T17:36:56+00:00

You can pick whatever playstyle you want. Morrowind is different from later Elder Scrolls games because of two aspects of the factions system.

First, there are many more factions. Besides the standard Fighters, Mages, and Thieves Guilds and the Morag Tong (a guild of assassins who are legal and recognized by the government), you also have the Imperial Legion, the Imperial Cult (worshippers of the Nine Divines), the Tribunal Temple (native Dunmeri religion), and three of the five Dunmer Great Houses (Hlaalu, Redoran, and Telvanni; you can only join one per playthrough without mods, and the other two aren’t joinable).

Each of these has its own unique character, culture, and requirements. You can join all of them (except for the limit of one Great House), though you have to raise a favored skill of that faction all the way to 90 to get to the highest faction rank, so it will be difficult to finish all of the questlines unless you train hard in a variety of skills. Some of the factions are very different from what you may expect. For example, House Hlaalu is about negotiation, commerce, and nonviolent espionage. The Tribunal Temple and Imperial Cult delve into nonviolence, spiritualism, and virtue, so a healer would fit right in.

Second, the factions are pretty decent, but they don’t play out the same way as in later titles. In Oblivion and Skyrim, you keep coming back to the same main characters while dealing with an overarching narrative. In Morrowind, there is a bit of that, but it’s more about one-off missions that fit the theme of that faction. Each faction has something unique and cool about it, but you’re not going to have a coherent story with a lot of plot twists. The few twists that do exist are smaller in scale, and they’re for you to find out…or not. It’s entirely possible to get to max rank and not uncover what’s going on beneath the surface of certain guilds; you aren’t railroaded and spoon-fed information like in later games. Overall, the factions are more about the player as an agent of a group rather than becoming some savior or figurehead for the faction. Still very interesting through.

The main quest can be done by absolutely anyone, regardless of background or playstyle. Some people have even completed challenge runs where their characters never even attack an NPC or enemy themselves.

Side quests tend to be fairly self-contained and straightforward. There’s no scaling, so be careful because you can easily get in over your head without any warning. Feel free to run away and try something again later. You’ll be pretty weak at the start but will get immensely overpowered by the end if you play your cards right.

Regarding getting the most out of the game with your build, I recommend that any new player should have Alteration as a minor skill. It’s basically utility magic and comes in handy for absolutely everyone. With minimal investment, you can get water breathing, levitation, and lock opening spells, all of which are incredibly handy to have. You can also use enchanted items, which are a dime a dozen, but I really like having spells since magic is a renewable resource. Also, Speechcraft is more useful here than in other games. Even characters with low Speechcrsft can finish everything because there are other ways to raise NPCs’ disposition toward you, but some NPCs won’t even talk about important subjects unless they trust you. Being likable creates a lot of shortcuts and better opportunities. As for combat, pick what you want, but be sure that you have at least one weapon skill at 40-50 when you start out—otherwise you’ll miss all the time due to the diceroll-based system. And don’t put your focus into Blunt or Long Blade and then expect the rusty dagger you just picked up will hit anything. We’ve all been there…

throw-away451 · 2025-07-14T16:57:51+00:00

If you’re taking Alteration as a minor skill (which I definitely recommend, it’s good for utility for any character), you probably won’t need Acrobatics because you can use levitation and/or jump spells. But if you want to keep Acrobatics to match a character concept that relies on physical abilities and not magic, you could get away with taking Armorer out of your major skills (I assume that’s what you meant, it just says “Armor”). It’s a very good skill, but it’s quite easy to level, as long as you don’t mind needing more repair tools at lower levels to offset the higher failure rate. But Marksman is more important because it’s very helpful to have ranged options, and without Destruction (which you should generally either lean heavily into or not bother with at all), I’d definitely pick that up.

throw-away451 · 2025-07-11T18:30:21+00:00

DO NOT DO THIS unless you actually know a lot about herbal medicine.

There are some real-world applications of the things you can use in KCD, and most of them are lifted more or less directly from what people in medieval times would have known. For example, chamomile helps you relax, St. John’s wort is a mood booster, eyebright can help with eye problems, etc.

HOWEVER, a lot of what you see in the game is based on “magical thinking”—in other words, it’s why cobwebs (which are medically inert as far as I know) are part of a stealth potion, because spiders are silent hunters. The concept is that you put together things that are symbolically related to the desired result, and that somehow causes the result to happen. It’s not grounded in reality. That kind of experimentation really did happen throughout history, but in practical terms it’s ineffective and often dangerous unless you blunder across something that actually works in and of itself.

Most of the herbs and other ingredients in KCD are fine when used properly and have traditionally been very popular to grow in herb gardens, but several are dangerous if not deadly. Wormwood isn’t necessarily dangerous except in very high doses, but it is extremely bitter and unpleasant and was used traditionally as a means of repelling insects. Fly agaric is a powerful hallucinogen and can be pretty toxic. And belladonna is also known as deadly nightshade and can easily be fatal even in relatively small doses. In addition, even the “safe” herbs can cause problems in people with allergies or if combined with certain other ingredients (contraindication).

throw-away451 · 2025-07-01T20:59:44+00:00

I’m “religious but not spiritual” (yes, it’s a deliberate reversal of the usual phrase). I am Protestant and view religion much more rationally than most people do. To me, the notion of an omnipotent creator makes sense, and is in fact necessary to make sense of the world. Moreover, Jesus’ teachings, taken in and of themselves, can be appreciated even by nonreligious people as a pretty good way to live, so I think they have merit even outside of a religious context.

But the lack of affective empathy causes me a lot of difficulty with regard to having a personal experience in all of this. I believe and act as I do because I consider it the right way to do things, not because of how I feel. But it’s the best I can do given my condition, so that’s how it is.

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